


The Undead of Poveglia

by okapi



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Decapitation, Fairy Tale Style, First Kiss, M/M, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Whump, Whump Joe/Yusuf, reference to suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:16:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26916478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: After a hundred years of agony, searching for answers and seeking revenge, Yusuf is ready to die.A body horror fairy tale for Halloween. Angst with a happy ending.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 29
Kudos: 127





	1. Chapter 1

Yusuf Al-Kaysani stumbled, but he caught himself before he tipped into the canal.

He looked up.

The sign was weather-beaten and worn. Yusuf could just make out the symbols etched there, a scimitar and a longsword, blades crossed, forming an X.

Yusuf stared up at the sign long enough to feel that he could trust his eyes.

It wasn’t a vision. Or a mirage. Or a ghost.

Two pedestrians bumped into him, standing as he was still and planted directly between the walls and the water. 

His eyes fixed overhead, Yusuf breathed a prayer of thanksgiving in his mother tongue.

He repeated the prayer as he sank his hand in his pocket. He curled his fingers around all he found, two coins and one bronze button; they made an anxious rattle as he jostled them. Without thinking, Yusuf shifted the pack on his back.

He silently repeated prayer a third and final time, and suddenly, he was awash with a relief which was succor to his aching, splintered, desiccated bones. The relief was so great that Yusuf’s eyelids felt heavy and seemed to drop slowly of their own volition. He closed his eyes and spoke aloud,

“Allah is merciful. I will finally die. Today.”

A hundred years earlier, a hundred years to that very day, in fact, in place far away from the city in which Yusuf found himself, yes, many, many days and nights walking from this city built on gilded faith and slapping water, Yusuf Al-Kaysani had opened his eyes to his worst nightmare.

It had been far worse than the horrors of invasion, worse than the slaughter of wailing infants on their mothers’ breasts, worse than blood running in the streets of a holy city.

It had been worse than all of those because those were horrors for all, horrors to share. Anyone who looked upon those horrors, anyone, that is, who was not perpetrating them, would be, and were, horrified by the sights and scream and stenches for as long, or as short, as they lived.

The sack of a city was the world’s nightmare.

But Yusuf’s nightmare, the violation, the desecration, the horror, to which Yusuf Al-Kaysani woke on that morning a hundred years ago, was for him alone. He’d had no one, no one in the whole of the world or the whole of history, even, with whom to share his grief, his anger, his sorrow, his outrage, his rage.

That long-ago morning, on the edge of the desert, Yusuf had opened his eyes to find he’d lost what he cherished most, lost it before he’d even known the real joy of cherishing it.

No, that was wrong. Yusuf had not lost it. It had been _taken_ from him, and Yusuf, at least in the beginning, had pledged his every waking moment to getting it back.

No. Not ‘it.’

A wise man will say ‘evil begins when you to treat people as things.’

Him.

Yusuf Al-Kaysani was determined to get _him_ back, to bring _him_ back, back to Yusuf and back to life.

That morning had been the first of a century-long quest, a futile, maddening endeavor for Yusuf Al-Kaysani.

He had searched. He’d scoured. He’d wandered. He’d asked and threatened. He cajoled and bribed. He’d cursed Allah and men and the world and himself.

He’d gone mad. Many times.

He’d killed and been killed. Again and again.

All for nothing!

Yusuf could not die, and Yusuf could not find what, whom, he sought.

He did not find _him_.

He was so weary, but now his weariness was at an end.

All this is what passed through Yusuf Al-Kaysani’s mind as he stood beneath the sign bearing the scimitar and the sword. That is what he thought as the people milled about him, going on their ways, flowing around the island of his body, striking him the way the waters of the canals struck this city on stilts.

Gently. Not so gently. 

Yusuf Al-Kaysani knew he would die today as his dream had foretold. The words of his dream echoed in his heart as he stared at the sign and the coins and button made their nervous music in his pocket.

**_Beneath the scimitar crossed with the sword,_ **

**_lay down your tale, your burden, your gourd.  
_ **

**_Ask for ‘poison’ with the last of your hoard,_ **

**_and a century’s pain will snap at the cord._ **

Yusuf pushed the door and stepped inside.

* * *

Yusuf’s eyes adjusted to the dimness of the tavern.

Six young men sat at a table. They had the high-spirited look of thirsty lads being served their first round. The older man who was serving them greeted Yusuf warmly and made a sweeping motion to indicate that Yusuf was welcome to take a seat anywhere, the empty tables or the empty stools at the bar.

Six pairs of eyes gave Yusuf the once-over, dismissed him, and fell back into chatter.

Yusuf, for his part, ignored the group and made for a stool at the bar. He pulled the stool away, the better to set his pack down gently on the ground and place himself between it and the door.

In one sense, the pack was not heavy. It had not been very heavy at the commencement of Yusuf’s quest, on that fateful, full of fate, fate of full, morning one hundred years ago, and, indeed, in that moment, the moment that Yusuf set it down on the tavern floor, the pack was lighter than it had ever had been.

There was only one thing in it, and that was the heaviest thing Yusuf had ever born.

And Yusuf _had_ born it, across deserts and mountains, through cities and countryside, into and out of madness. He’d carried it to death.

“Welcome to Giacomo’s, stranger. I’m Giacomo, the last son of Giacomo, who was the last son of the Mad Turk, at your service. What’ll it be?”

The man behind the bar spoke cheerily. He took up a glass and, in the long-standing manner of his ilk, began to rub it with a clean rag. There was something in his face, or maybe it was the shape of the face itself, which Yusuf liked. He had the face, Yusuf decided, of a genial frog and the dark, coarse, hoar-streaked hair of a stubborn century-old mule. He would tell a good story. He would tell an amusing joke. He would listen. He would not judge madness or mistakes. The word ‘friend’ rose to the surface of Yusuf’s heart then dissolved into the gall which had, over the past hundred years, taken the place of Yusuf’s blood.

In response to the question, Yusuf sunk his hand into his pocket and scooped up its contents in his fist. He slammed his hand flat on the bar. The chatter behind him ceased abruptly at the noise. Yusuf moved his hand away to reveal the two coins and the button of bronze.

“A cup of your strongest poison,” Yusuf said and held Giacomo’s gaze, letting the import of the words be transferred from his countenance to the other’s.

Giacomo’s smile faded. He took up the button and studied it in the light for a long moment.

Yusuf watched an odd constellation of emotions cross the man’s face.

Surprise. Disbelief. Recognition. Concern.

Then there came something that looked something like bravery in the face of adversity, an expression Yusuf had known well at one time.

Giacomo nodded soberly and disappeared through a curtain of beads, taking the button with him.

Yusuf’s soul rent in two. He gripped the edge of the bar to keep from catapulting himself forward and following the tavern owner through the curtain and wrenching the button from his fingers. Yusuf hadn’t meant to do that. He hadn’t meant to pay with that. Not that. Why hadn’t Giacomo taken the coins? They were the only thing of value.

Yusuf’s rage flared, then soured to a gloomy, self-pitying stew.

This was the end, he reminded himself. It was foolish to hold on to such things, material things. Holding on made the rending more painful.

He shook his head ruefully at the coins, abandoned on the bar. They looked like a pair of rheumy eyes, sick and disappointed in Yusuf Al-Kaysani.

Elder eyes. Grandfather eyes.

Yusuf slapped the bar again and took the coins back and dropped them in his pocket.

The young men at the table were in animated conversation. One of the voices rose above the rest.

“ _I’m going, I tell you! I’m going tonight!”_

_“Yeah, yeah, right.”_

_“I’m going! I’ve a boat ready and paid for! It’s nearby.”_

The speaker rattled off a name that meant nothing to Yusuf, who had been in the city mere hours before stumbling beneath the sign of the scimitar and the sword.

_“I’m going out there tonight. C’mon. It’s All Hallows’ Eve. What better night for it? Who is with me? Who wants to meet The Ghost of Poveglia?”_

This challenge was met with a cacophony of replies, from hard taunts to incredulous snickering to placating noises.

“Don’t mind them,” said Giacomo. “Here you go.”

Yusuf had only imbibed spirits, in the form of wine, on one occasion in his long life, but he knew at once that what was placed before him was not the fruit of any vine. 

He stared at the brown liquid in the glass. He put his nose to it and sniffed.

It certainly looked, and smelled, like poison, the offspring of some dark alchemy.

A voice behind Yusuf rose in challenge.

_“None of you cowards will come with me tonight to Poveglia?”_

“What is Poveglia?” asked Yusuf idly.

“It’s an island,” Giacomo waved his hand in the general direction of the open sea, “which they say is haunted. It’s All Hallows’ Eve.” He shrugged like an indulgent uncle. “Everyone’s somewhere else tonight. Praying, playing, wooing. That’s why it’s so quiet. It’s the kind of night when brash young things like show their mettle in foolish ways.”

Yusuf nodded. He knew about brash young things showing their mettle in foolish ways. Sometimes they left their homes in search of adventure. Sometimes they got in their heads to march across many lands and sack a holy city and kill scores of people they’d never met for nothing more than greed built upon lies and promises. Sometimes they waded in the blood they spilt. And sometimes, sometimes, even as they drew their swords, even as they stood soaked in sweat and blood, they looked at you with wide eyes as blue and green and gray as the mercurial sea, they brought you…

_…to your death!_

Yusuf blinked. “To my death?” he echoed.

The barman’s own glass was raised, and there was a curious, hesitant, questioning light in his eyes.

Yusuf sensed he was on the edge of causing offense. He quickly raised his glass.

“Please forgive me. You caught me wool-gathering. What did you say?”

The man’s smile was kindly. “I said ‘To your health,’ stranger, but I’ll add, ‘to the death of all your sorrows.’”

“And to yours, that is, to your health.”

Yusuf drank his poison in one gulp.

* * *

As Yusuf Al-Kaysani’s belly filled with what he knew to be poison, as that poison mixed with his own juices seeped into his blood, as all that transpired on the lone occupied stool of The Scimitar & The Sword, a body stirred.

Beyond the slapping waters, across a strip of open sea, a body stirred.

The body was buried in the shallowest of graves. The fingers of one of its hands fluttered, then curled to grip the soil which formed its blanket and its shroud.

It could not scream. It could not shed a single tear. It could not hear the slapping water.

But it could feel.

And it felt the vibration of a dream, and the dream was something like the bloom of an Easter lily raised from the dead soil of winter’s memory.

**_Beneath the scimitar crossed with the sword,_ **

**_when dying lips drink from poison’s deep gourd,_ **

**_when the puzzle is pieced and seas see the ford,_ **

**_the frayed ends will meet and marry the cord._ **

The words repeated. The body felt them, that is, the hand felt them, trembling in the soil, carried by the slapping water across the open sea. The hand felt the words and told the sleeping heart, and the heart began to beat.

When the words faded, the hand told the other hand to dig its fingers into the soil. Then the hand told the other hand to push.

The hands pushed, raising the heart from its shallow grave.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yusuf tells a story.

“So,” began Giacomo when he’d returned from delivering another pitcher to the table which was still the only occupied one in the dim tavern, “tell me a story.”

The glass which had been placed before Yusuf was drained, and Yusuf could feel the poison racing along his blood vessels like too much rain through fractured gutters. It wouldn’t be long. His death was near.

Yusuf dropped his feet protectively about the sack which lay on the floor, propped as it was gently and patiently against the wall of the bar.

“Come on, tell me a story,” urged Giacomo.

“What makes you think I have a story to tell?” Yusuf retorted, hotly, wearily, pointedly, really, what did it matter how he said anything anymore?

“Everyone has a story to tell, but you, stranger,” Giacomo’s eyes were lit by a strange fire, and he turned the tip of his index finger toward the cavity where Yusuf’s heart had once dwelt, “ _you, stranger, have a story I want to hear_.”

When Giacomo had said this, he reached for a stool and settled himself directly across the bar from Yusuf with his thick arms crossed over his chest, which he momentarily uncrossed to make a ‘go on’ motion before settling back down.

Yusuf’s face ached a little, just a little. Yusuf’s soul ached a little, just a little.

Yusuf’s soul was, though buried under a hundred years’ dust and agony, that of a born storyteller. He touched his beard and realised he was smiling. That explained the aches.

Giacomo raised his eyebrows as if to say ‘See?’

Yusuf took a deep breath. He was dying, he knew, so why take the story to the grave?

Yusuf Al-Kaysani cleared his throat and began.

“The story is of two men, two enemies.”

Giacomo nodded. Yusuf found his voice.

“They were evenly matched. One carried a scimitar. One carried a longsword. They fought. And fought. And fought. They could not kill each other. And they could not be killed by each other. Evenly, perfectly matched, you see?”

[This was, of course, something of a prevarication. They could kill. They could be killed. What they could not do was _remain_ killed. Hairs, it is well known, can be split with a sharp and careful tongue as easily as with a longsword or a scimitar.]

“The man with the scimitar became so weary of this struggle that had no end, that had no victory and no defeat, that at last, as he stood over the felled swordsman, with his weapon held high, with his blade poised to swing, with his curved axe ready to slice a head clean from a pair of shoulders, he stopped and offered the swordsman his hand instead of death.”

Yusuf paused.

“And?” prompted Giacomo, knowing his part to the breath.

“And the other took the proffered hand, and they left the battlefield. The man with the scimitar still hated the man with the longsword, and the man with the longsword knew it. The man with the longsword followed the man with the scimitar like a stray mongrel, eating the grains of rice that fell from the other’s bowl, sleeping when the other slept but at a cold, remote distance, not making so much as a whine or a whimper, yet following, always, like a silent cur shadow. They travelled like that for a long time until…”

Yusuf took a deep breath.

“…they were beset by bandits.”

“And they fought together,” supplied Giacomo with a smile that said, ‘I know how this one goes.’

Yusuf nodded and returned the smile, his second smile in a hundred years, which, he found, did not ache nearly as much as the first.

“And they fought together,” Yusuf echoed. “And they vanquished the bandits like that,” he snapped his fingers, “and when the fight was over, and the bodies lay all around, they looked at each other, and the man with the scimitar saw the man with the longsword as a man, not a mongrel, and the man with the longsword raised his eyes from the ground, and the peace between them was forged into iron. And so, they travelled on, eating together, each from his own bowl; sleeping by the same fire; walking side-by-side; exchanging words that were not insults; and learning words in each other’s tongue. And over time, fighting and wandering and learning from one another, they became…”

Yusuf looked at Giacomo knowingly.

“Brothers,” finished Giacomo.

“Brothers,” said Yusuf Al-Kaysani.

The single word travelled through slapping water and open sea until it reached land.

“Brothers.”

Knees heard the word. Toes heard the word.

Knees and toes told the heart, and the heart began to beat in two syllables, lub-dub.

“Bro-thers.”

“Bro-thers.”

But after a while, there grew a lilt at the end.

“Bro-thers?”

[They were brothers and brothers-in-arms but, but, but…

…but Yusuf had always—yes, from the first time they’d killed each other, and even before, from the first dream—been a fool for those eyes, the color of the sea and all its blends of storm and calm, its many tones of blue flecked with greens, then grays.

After the ambush, after they’d fought for the first time side-by-side instead of against each other, after they’d ended up covered in blood and dirt and sweat, with chests heaving and muscles burning, after all that, those eyes, those beautiful sea eyes, had lifted to meet Yusuf’s, and Yusuf had let the scales of anger and bitterness and confusion fall from his own eyes.

He truly seen his adversary-turned-companion.

The problem was, of course, that Yusuf Al-Kaysani, like all genuine lovers of life, like all born artists and born storytellers, saw with his heart as well as his eyes. 

And, of course, when he really looked at the Frank, who was no Frank at all, really, he’d fallen hopelessly in love, and his knees had actually buckled, and he had to be caught before he hit the ground by two strong arms like a maiden of song.

Yusuf Al-Kasayni, the very same Yusuf Al-Kaysani who was given to wiping his bloody blade clean on the inner thighs of the last man he’d slain, had swooned.

He’d recovered quickly, though.

They’d found a river and washed, and for the first time, Yusuf had turned away out of modesty and shyness. Perhaps he can be forgiven for this because it was the first time that he’d not been alone to wash. Before then, the cur had always remained on the bank, waiting, eyes on the dirt, for Yusuf finish.

His companion, whom until then Yusuf had assumed prized an exterior state of filth equal to his inner state of corruption, had spent, or so it seemed to Yusuf then, an inordinate amount of time bathing, scrubbing his whole body raw with coarse wool. Strangely, he left his battle clothes behind, too.

Clean and dressed, he had stood beside Yusuf and met Yusuf’s gaze again, and Yusuf could not help but feel the words, ‘he’s reborn’ vibrate in his heart, a trembling which was quickly followed by ‘and so am I, reborn, but we, he and I, we are born. For the first time. Together.’ 

Yusuf had smiled, and his smile had been returned not by a smile, the corners of that mouth would not be tempted into twitching for many moons, but rather by a lightening of those sea eyes from storm warning to fair sailing.

It was good enough for Yusuf.

And they’d set off, side-by-side.

They’d talked. They’d learned words for talking. They’d fought. And ate. And slept. And wondered at their state of immortality. And wondered at their purpose. And wondered at the taste of the other’s lips.

Well, maybe the last had been Yusuf alone, he’d never know for certain. No, not never. After a hundred years of wondering and wandering, Yusuf Al-Kaysani would know with absolute certain whether the warmth and nature of his feelings had been reciprocated as soon as the tavernkeeper’s poison had done its work. Because he’d be dead and finally reunited with the one who could tell him.

Brothers.

So, back to the word, yes, brothers, and, yes, certainly, brothers and brothers-in-arms, but with the whisper, just the faint sound, like an unspoken prayer, of something that was not brothers.

Unspoken, yes, but about to be spoken. Yusuf had spun the gossamer words out of looks, shared and stolen, out of apricots and figs, out of silent, gilded moments in which bedrolls were unrolled just a finger’s width closer to one another than the night before.

The words were on Yusuf’s lips, arranged and polished several times over. They were sitting tucked between his bottom teeth and gums, pooling like the brown dross that old men spit.

But Yusuf never spit the words out. He never had the chance to. Eventually, he had to swallow them.

Like medicine.

Like poison.] 

* * *

Knees crashed to earth. Fingers struck soil.

A body crumpled. A body died, thinking, asking,

**_How graven the interred soul-Bedouin,_ **

**_how lone what life and death jettison,_ **

**_how fragile the mutinied skeleton!_ **

**_Is love cruel poison or fate’s medicine?_ **


	3. Chapter 3

_“Come on, stranger, don’t you want to join me tonight? Don’t you want to meet the Undead of Poveglia?!”_

Yusuf was yanked out of his silent reminiscing by a cold tension which, he quickly realized, emanated from a hand which was grasping a wrist which was hovering just above and behind his left shoulder. The wrist was attached to a hand which had been about to clap on Yusuf’s back in the often-sudden-and-always-unwelcome familiarity of the drunk.

Yusuf turned in his seat to look.

Giacomo’s face, his profile, had turned hard, stony, and, somehow, even more familiar to Yusuf.

“Keep your fancies to yourself, Tonio, or you’ll be drinking somewhere else,” the tavernkeeper warned.

“No harm, tio, no harm.” The voice was suddenly contrite and young. “Why don’t you go with me, Giacomo?”

“I have no time for such foolishness.”

“The Mad Turk would’ve come.”

“He did a lot things he shouldn’t have.” Giacomo flicked his gaze toward Yusuf. “Excuse me for a moment.”

Yusuf nodded.

Giacomo’s features instantly softened, and he was the jolly tavernkeeper again, bustling about, hen-like, going to and fro, exchanging the table’s empty pitchers for full ones.

One of Tonio’s mates approached. Before leading his friend back to the table, he curled his arm round Tonio’s head and gave it a light rap and hissed,

“Why did in God’s name did you bring up the Mad Turk?”

Tonio shrugged and grumbled, “I don’t know.”

“Have some respect If your mad grandfather drowned off some haunted island, you think you’d want to be reminded of it? And on tonight of all nights? C’mon.” Yusuf sensed, rather than heard or felt, the admonishing tap on the head that Tonio must’ve received.

* * *

Eventually, Giacomo resettled on the stool across from Yusuf.

“All right, go on,” he said. “That’s just the first part. Tell me, what happened to the brothers?”

Yusuf was impatient.

Why wasn’t he dead yet? His blood was cold, terribly cold, but he could still think, still remember, still feel. He was still sitting upright. He sighed. He might as well go on.

The short version?

“One of the brothers died. The other did not.”

 _The other did not._ That was the story.

Giacomo scoffed. “What do you take me for? There’s more than that.”

The longer version, then.

“The brothers happened to cross paths with another traveler, a trader who hailed from the same region as the man with the scimitar. It had been a long time since the man with the scimitar had met one of his own kind, and so he left his brother for an evening and went to the camp of the trader, who was departing early the following morning. At the end of the evening, the trader gave the man with the scimitar a wineskin to share with his brother. Late that night, the man with the scimitar returned to his brother, who was waiting for him. The man with the longsword was overjoyed at the wine, and his joy was catching. The man with the scimitar partook of the wine, too. They shared the entire contents of skin, the brothers.”

[They shared the wineskin and looked into each other’s eyes and looked at each other’s hair, at each other’s cheekbones, at each other’s fingers, each other’s lips, and the words were pooling in Yusuf’s mouth, fermenting like tears…]

“And?” prompted Giacomo.

“And in the morning, the man with the longsword was dead.”

Yusuf wobbled on the stool, but whether it was from the first icy grip of the poison or from the shock of how easy it was to say those words aloud, he didn’t know.

“Who killed him?” asked Giacomo. “The trader? Bandits? The man with the scimitar himself in a fit of lunacy?”

Yusuf shook his head slowly, then shrugged. “The man with the scimitar didn’t know.”

[He still didn’t. After a hundred years. That was lunacy in and of itself]

“The longsword was still there, and his brother’s pack and bedroll remained.”

“The brother could have just left for some reason. How did the man with the scimitar know his brother was dead? There was blood?”

“Yes.” Yusuf’s eyes were open, but he saw nothing but that empty bedroll of a hundred years ago.

[Yusuf had been on the point of suggesting that the bedrolls be placed just a bit closer, close enough that with the instinctive nocturnal search for warmth, they might wake in each other’s arms, but the wine had swiftly and surely dispensed with all thought. And in the morning, it was too late to say anything.]

“There was blood. The man with the scimitar thought he’d heard something in his sleep, a cry, but he couldn’t be certain.”

[Too muddled. The sound might have been nothing more than the offspring of hindsight and wishful thinking.]

“Maybe the man with the longsword was only injured. Or taken captive,” suggested Giacomo.

Yusuf shook his head. “The man with the longsword was never seen again. The man with the scimitar followed the trail of blood and found the proof that his brother was dead.”

[Yusuf should have known then. Yusuf Al-Kaysani, born storyteller, should have known in that very moment that the story would not end the way he expected. He should’ve known because Giacomo was the perfect audience, and the perfect audience would’ve known, at this point, to ask,

‘What was the proof?’

But Giacomo didn’t ask.]

Giacomo nodded. Giacomo said nothing. Yusuf went on.

“The man with the scimitar went mad searching for the murderer of his brother. He devoted the rest of his life to it.”

Yusuf scrubbed his face with his hand which meant ‘the end.’

[That morning.

Yusuf had scrubbed his face with his hand that morning, a hundred years ago. He’d woke late and groggy and, most of all, disappointed that he hadn’t said and done all that he had planned to say and do. He’d thought that the wine would ease the conversation and the acts, but his own childishly weak tolerance had foiled him. In truth, Yusuf didn’t even remember returning to his own bedroll.

The trader.

The appearance of Karim had been unexpected, but Yusuf had enjoyed the old man’s company. The opportunity to speak in his own language, to talk about places and things remembered from home, to even sing bits of old songs was to be grasped eagerly and with both hands. And Yusuf had enjoyed himself despite Karim’s tiresome advice and avuncularity, which had included unsavory warnings about ‘that dirty Frank you’re traveling with.’ Yusuf dismissed the last with several waves of his hand, and, at last, Karim had, politely or shrewdly, abandoned the subject.

When Yusuf had been of a mind to think of it, he’d thought that Karim’s arrival had only postpone the inevitable. After all, Yusuf had all the time in the world to go about his wooing, and Yusuf Al-Kaysani could be a patient man, indeed, when he chose to be.

But Yusuf had suspected, hoped, by the look in those sea-colored eyes that his feelings were reciprocated, and a mutual admission of these feelings was a mere night or morning away.

Yusuf had been wrong, of course. Dead wrong.]

“How long did it take the brother to go mad?” asked Giacomo gently.

“Not long.”

[Truth. Yusuf had followed the trail of blood and had found the button, one of three bronze buttons that had been sewn onto the tunic Yusuf knew better than his own. When he’d found the button, he’d found something else.]

“He never found the body,” said Yusuf. “He searched and searched for the body. Weeks and weeks.” He shook his head. “But he couldn’t find it, so then he gave up and vowed revenge, and he went searching for the murderer far and wide.” Yusuf shook his head again. “It was too late by then to find a trail that meant anything. He found nothing.”

Yusuf threw his arms wide, his eyes wide, his soul wide.

“Nothing,” he repeated.

Then Yusuf wilted and dropped his head and fixed his gaze on the limp sack and silently asked for forgiveness. Contrition swelled and swallowed him. 

“Eventually he had to sell the longsword. He needed the money to keep searching, and he had nothing left to sell. He never found the body. He never found the murderer.”

[If only Yusuf had been braver or stronger or quicker or luckier or something.]

And now it was time to surrender.

Yusuf raised his head. Giacomo’s concerned expression was a watery blur.

Maybe Yusuf was weeping.

Or maybe he was just dying.

“That is a story, stranger, but that is not _your_ story,” said Giacomo. He was addressing the empty glass on the bar as much as Yusuf himself. “That is your grandfather’s story. Or, more likely, your great-grandfather’s.”

Yusuf blinked. The tears spilled. And his vision cleared. He was genuinely perplexed.

“Why do you say that?”

“Who gave you this button?” Giacomo raised the small bronze disc high then put it down gently on the bar between them. “Grandfather? Great-grandfather?”

 _Does he know something? Does he really know something?_ Hope was luxury Yusuf could not afford. _He probably just knows about buttons._

Yusuf thought he heard a dreamy nonsensical chanting.

**_a button bronze, a lamb-for-mutton yawns,_ **

**_a rut in fawns, a fancy hut in lawns,_ **

**_a nut in prawns, a grief-gloom glutton pawns_ **

**_a button bronze as fate’s own glut-in dawns_ **

A mustard seed of Yusuf the warrior stirred under the heaping great funeral pyre of Yusuf the failed avenger, the thwarted lover, the bereft and widowered. 

“Great-grandfather,” lied Yusuf, eyeing the tavernkeeper with a strange newness, a new strangeness.

WHAP!

A hard hand slapped Yusuf’s back.

_“One more round, G’como! And then I’m off to meet the Headless Ghost of Poveglia--aargh!”_

Yusuf never liked ambushes. Or surprises.

WHAM!

It was instinct. Tonio was on the ground. Yusuf was on him, kneeling on his chest, but being pulled off by strong, stout arms.

“He’s just a lad. He’s just a lad who’s had too much to drunk. Let him up,” mumbled Giacomo. “I’ll take care of him. He means no harm, and he’ll do no harm on my watch.”

Yusuf stepped back and apologized. “You startled me. I’m sorry.”

“You should know better than that, Tonio,” admonished Giacomo, slipping gracefully between the two. He switched smoothly to placation. “The last round is on me if it is the last round, and you and your friends take your celebrating elsewhere.”

Tonio got to his feet, his face a mask of indignation, affrontery, and fear, but he sobered quickly enough and sniffed. “Last round.” He returned to his group sauntering, shrugging off the whole encounter with juvenile bravado. 

While Giacomo bustled with empty and full pitchers, Yusuf reflected.

* * *

When Giacomo settled once more on the stool, Yusuf asked,

“The ghost of Poveglia, have you seen it?”

Giacomo smiled but seemed to take a long time choosing his words.

“How do you know that button?” pressed Yusuf without waiting for an answer to the first question.

“Ah, I am Giacomo, last son of Giacomo, who was last son of the Mad Turk. I know that button because of my grandfather. I’ve seen that button before. I’ll show you. Excuse me.”

He got up and disappeared through the beaded curtain.

Yusuf panicked. After a hundred years, he might have finally stumbled upon something and it would be his curse to do so a breath before his last.

The glass! The poison!

He was dying!

Yusuf took up the button with trembling fingers and rubbed it like a praying bead.

* * *

Across the slapping water and the open sea, trembling fingers gripped soil again.

Bro-thers?

But-tons?

Death. Life. Death. Life. 

Hands pushed away from the earth once more, and feet found purchase and equilibrium. Feet remembered the path to the tree.

Step, step, step.

Arm extended until fingers found the gnarly bark remembered. Fingers trailed round the trunk until they reached the notch. In the notch, they found the disk and rubbed it. Fingers put the disk to the heart and other fingers felt for the bark as knees bent, as back slid down, down, down.

Life. Death. Life. Death.

Death.

* * *

Giacomo took far too long. Yusuf was pacing behind the stool.

“What is the poison you gave me?!” charged Yusuf as soon as the tavernkeeper reappeared.

“Tea, stranger. Nasty tea, cold tea, weed tea, but just tea. Not poison.”

“But I asked for…?”

Giacomo shot Yusuf a look that silenced him but followed it up with a gentler, almost apologetic, “Poisoning the patrons isn’t good for business. Even when they ask you to. _Especially_ when they ask you to.”

Yusuf forgot about tea and poison. His attention was on the cylinder in Giacomo’s hands.

Pressed into the cylinder was a bronze button which matched the one on the bar. And there were two indentations on either side which were the exact same shape as the button.

Yusuf stared until he decided he could trust his eyes. Then he said, distractedly,

“Tell me a story, Giacomo.”

“It is well you should ask, stranger. My name is Giacomo, last son of Giacomo, who was last son of the Mad Turk. Everyone round here always called my grandfather the Mad Turk. He was mad, yes, at the end. But, to put it bluntly, the folks here don’t know a pike from a pikestaff. My grandfather wasn’t a Turk at all, really…”

The mustard seed of Yusuf the warrior, Yusuf the immortal, Yusuf the lover grew.

“What was he?” Yusuf whispered but he knew, he knew, he knew, softly, _he knew_.

“…he was a Maghrebi trader named Karim.”


	4. Chapter 4

Yusuf was disoriented, not certain if his world was tilting on its axis or if it had been tilted for a hundred years and was finally righting itself.

Regardless, it was heavy, the knowledge, and the import of the knowledge, that he was sitting before the grandson of Karim the Maghrebi trader on the very day that he, Yusuf Al-Kaysani, had understood would be the last day of his painful, tragic sojourn on earth. The knowledge sank into his Yusuf’s bones and began to take root, the tendrils uncoiling from seed and altering the very composition of his marrow.

“Like yours, it really isn’t my story, and because of that, I don’t even know the most important part,” admitted Giacomo ruefully.

“We are alike then,” agreed Yusuf. He, too, didn’t know the most important part of his story.

_Who stole the moon from my firmament? And where are the ashes of my moonlight interred? And is there a throat possessed of blood and breath that I might slit to soothe my righteous wrath?_

“What I know is what my father told me. My grandfather died before I was born. But I have no reason to suspect my father held back or spared me anything. I know my grandfather wasn’t always a madman. Something happened to him on his last trading journey. He returned a shell of his former self. He was a ghost. He didn’t eat. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t work. My father reported that my grandfather had very violent dreams, and no one would sleep near him, not even when he nodded off in a chair during the day, which he did often. He began to drink, too, though he had never liked spirits as a rule. My father said he treated them as a tonic forced upon him by some invisible physician. A demon physician, according to my father. My grandfather spent the very last years of his life almost completely alone, either in his workshop or on his little boat. He made this,” he held the cylinder, “and entrusted it to my father, who entrusted it to me before he died. My grandfather died at sea. He drowned. His boat, then his body, were found by fishermen.”

“He made this,” repeated Giacomo, poetically and prophetically, taking up the bronze button that lay on the bar and slotted it neatly into one of the two empty cavities on the cylinder, “and made my father pledge to keep it safe. I don’t even know what it contains.”

Yusuf began to suspect what it might contain, and the mere supposition overwhelmed him. Nevertheless, he managed to croak, “You’ve never tried to pry it open or break it?”

Giacomo gave a rueful shake of the head. “I think that’s why my father entrusted it to me. I was the most dutiful. Or the least curious. And, well, if I’d ever had any thoughts of forcing it open, they died when my cousin did.”

“Your cousin?”

“My uncle’s son heard about it and thought it contained treasure, jewels or a map leading to a hidden horde my grandfather had buried. He stuck a thin blade here,” Giacomo indicated a single seam, “and here,” a pinpoint, “a thorn emerged which was laced with poison. It pricked his finger. He died early the next morning. He was young.” One corner of Giacomo’s mouth twitch in what might have been bittersweet remembrance.

Yusuf’s eyebrow rose. “May I?” He reached for the cylinder.

Giacomo handed it over.

As Yusuf weighed the cylinder in his hand, he had the odd notion he was holding his fate in his palm. Both cylinder and Yusuf’s fate were disconcertingly light.

“It unlocks with the placement of the third button,” said Giacomo. He reached and tapped the third, empty buttonhole with the tip of his finger. “That’s what my father said, what the Mad Turk told him. Three identical buttons.”

_The third button. Where was it?_

There had been three on the tunic that Yusuf remembered.

Karim’s grandson had one. Yusuf had one.

And the third…

“Giacomo, I have to know what really happened. I made a promise.” [Lie. Yusuf had made no promises, not even to himself.] “The third button,” he continued but could say no more.

“The third button,” echoed Giacomo. “My father taught me the little rhyme that his father taught him:

**_One for the shattered, and one for the slain,_ **

**_one for the soul with a hundred years’ pain._ **

**_One for the slayer, one for the betrayed_ **

_**one with the undead, where freak madness is laid**.” _

Giacomo coughed.

“I thought that ‘the soul with a hundred years’ pain’ was my grandfather, that is, until you put that button on the bar. Your face, forgive me, stranger, is etched with at least a century’s sorrow. But if that is so, then I suppose my grandfather is the ‘shattered.’ It makes sense. I just never thought of it like that until now. Your great-grandfather’s friend would’ve been the slain.”

He had a name, Yusuf thought idly.

_The slayer. The betrayed._

_The undead…_

_The ghost…_

_The headless…_

A loud disjointed many-voiced thunder jolted Yusuf from his conjecturing and suppositions. He looked over his shoulder. The young men at the table were standing and stretching, testing their legs. Two moved toward the corner of the room. Yusuf’s eyes followed them to a swinging door.

“Leads to the privy out back,” explained Giacomo, catching Yusuf’s glance.

Yusuf nodded. He set the cylinder with the two buttons on the bar.

“Giacomo, have you ever seen the ghost of Poveglia?”

The tavernkeeper turned pale and a thin sheen of sweat broke out on his brow. Then he quirked a sheepish smile and said in a low voice,

“Only once. I was a brash young thing who liked to show his mettle in foolish ways. I went out there one All Hallows’ Eve.”

“And what did you see?”

Giacomo gave a minute shrug. “I was young. I am certain I imagined it.”

“What did you _imagine_ you saw?” Yusuf grew impatient and made an attempt to strike the man’s soul with the force of his gaze.

“A figure.”

“Human?”

“Yes, a man, I think.”

“Nude?”

“No, draped in what looked like a piece of torn sailcloth.”

“What color hair?”

Giacomo hesitated. Yusuf wanted to shove his hand down the man’s throat and pull the words out. It took every modicum of reserve for him to not give into the impulse.

“Was it floating on air?” pressed Yusuf. “Flying?”

“No, it was walking.”

“On feet?”

“Yes.”

“Two arms?”

“Yes, they were stretched out.” Giacomo pantomimed a person navigating a dark room full of furniture.

“What color hair, Giacomo?”

Giacomo swallowed. “No hair.”

“Bald? Hairless?”

Giacomo shook his head. Tears welled. 

Yusuf knew. He knew! But he had to hear it aloud.

“No head,” whispered Giacomo.

Yusuf needed nothing more. His fate was sealed.

“Giacomo, I must go to Poveglia at once!”

Giacomo stared and whatever he saw in Yusuf’s eyes brought the color back to his face and something like three generations worth of resolution in his gaze. He called out in a stentorian voice,

“Tonio, two uncles will join you on your quest, myself and…”

“Yusuf Al-Kaysani,” supplied Yusuf, slipping off the stool and reaching down for his pack. Then he added, cavalierly, “great-grandson of Yusuf Al-Kaysani.”

* * *

Giacomo proved an apt and able mate for the venture. He didn't balked or even blinked when Yusuf had ordered him to gather water, blankets, a change of clothes, and a lantern. He simply disappeared through the beaded curtain and returned a few minutes later with a pack of supplies. He hadn’t needed Yusuf to tell him to pack the cylinder as well.

Tonio was overjoyed at the elaboration of his original plan. His drinking companions shared a collective expression of something like relief that they themselves were not going to be conscripted into the quest. They bid the three luck and took their leave with alacrity.

“Have you a weapon?” Yusuf had asked while Tonio had gone to the privy.

Giacomo had grinned and dived behind the bar. In a flash, he’d popped up again and dropped two heavy blades on the polished wood between himself and Yusuf.

Yusuf had stared, wide-eyed. “Are those…?”

“The scimitar and the sword of The Scimitar and the Sword? They are, indeed, sir. And be advised, I keep ‘em in good working order. They used to hang on the wall,” he pointed to a few bare hooks in the wall behind him, “but one monkey thought he’d be clever and climb a tree that was the end of that.”

Giacomo handed Yusuf the scimitar without a word. Yusuf studied the blade and nodded approvingly. Then he frowned.

“You’re very free with your arms, Giacomo.”

“Not really. I just like your face,” the tavernkeeper smiled, “I’ve a nice stick we can give the lad. He won’t want to be empty-handed, but I don’t trust him at all, not with all he’s had to drink. Let's call it a ‘killing-ghost stake’ so his pride’s not hurt.”

Yusuf laughed for the first time in a hundred years. It hurt.

* * *

In a very short time, Yusuf, Giacomo, and Tonio were in the rented boat headed toward the island of Poveglia.

Yusuf was at the front, scanning the horizon, willing the island nearer and holding his pack to his chest.

A round silvery moon hung in the firmament. For the first time in a hundred years, Yusuf Al-Kaysani could look upon so beautiful a celestial orb without pain, be it, dull or sharp, eldritch or plain, reproachful or despairing.

“Ya qamar,” he whispered to the moon. “Ya qamar, I am coming for you. I will bring you back to life or I will lay you to rest, but I won’t sleep, eat, or pray until I’ve seen every grass, twig, and rock of that island. I will find you! Dead, alive, in pieces, or whole! You are my ghost to find! Mine! We’ll have the third button, we’ll learn the truth, and we’ll put the last hundred years behind us and start on the next hundred. Together."

* * *

At first, there was no island, just black water painted with moonlight, but then Yusuf spotted land.

“There!” called Giacomo.

Behind Yusuf, Tonio whooped in delight. There followed a surprised cry and a heavy thud and nothing. 

Yusuf turned. He saw Tonio lying still in a heap on the bottom of the boat, then he looked at Giacomo, who was leaning down to put two fingers on the young man's neck.

“Out but not dead. It’s better this way,” said Giacomo. “I’ll handle the boat. You just go.”

Yusuf gave a nod. He turned and set his pack on his back and waited anxiously for the approach of the land.

As soon as Yusuf was certain he could cover the distance, he leapt from the prow to the ground, and the moment his boots touched the soil, he raised the scimitar high and screamed, expelling a century’s fury and frustration,

“NICOLÒ!”


	5. Chapter 5

The ground shook with the word.

“NICOLÒ!”

The soil rumbled with it, stirring the undead corpse which lay sleeping in a shallow grave.

Feet woke to the word. Hands woke to it. A heart woke to it.

And the body knew, knew the word for its own.

But the heart dared not beat.

It might be a dream. Or a wish the wind had made.

When the word rang out a second time, it was louder, heavier, clearer, and more urgent.

The heart added a skip to its lub-dub.

“NI-CO-LÒ!”

Not reverie. Or phantom hope. Or storm.

That was voice, voice calling.

Calling _him_.

“NI-CO-LÒ!”

The force of the three sounds splintered the earth. Fissures spread like so many tiny broken veins across the surface of the island’s skin, like a web of cracks on the delicate shell of an egg.

Hands pushed. A chest rose. Toes wiggled. A body righted itself.

Feet moved in counter-current to nature, seeking the epicenter of the quake rather than fleeing it.

Feet were walking by the time they felt the third vibration. It began the same but ended differently from the first two. Feet fought the impulse to run, to race. Arms were extended like insect antenna, gathering sense of surroundings. Hands reached out to guard against danger.

Feet wanted nothing more than to run but feared the unseen, unheard, unobserved dangers. They felt hobbled by the inherent clumsiness of its gait. Feet remembered so much stumbling, so many falls. Feet remembered tipping to ground and dashing against it in pain.

The body was moving as swiftly as it could, which was, in fact, not swiftly all, but it was moving and moving ceaselessly in heartsick quest for the source of the tremor.

It stopped at the gulf.

Toes tested the slope down to the water but did not go far, hesitating.

Should it plunge?

How swift? How cold?

Swift enough and bitter cold, said the toes.

It waited on the shore.

* * *

Hope, rescued from the brink of despair, drove Yusuf mad. And loud. He filled his lungs to bursting and called out,

“NICOLÒ! IT’S YUSUF!”

Yusuf cut his way through the brush with the scimitar, leaving a broad path for Giacomo to follow if he chose. Eventually, Yusuf reached the small canal that Giacomo had mentioned in the boat on the way over. The canal, he’d said, divided the island in half.

Yusuf frantically scanned up and down the water.

Then he stopped. His breath stopped. His heart may have stopped.

Was that him? Was that pale smudge in the distance on the other side of canal really Nicolò, the undead of Poveglia, the light of Yusuf’s world?

Or were Yusuf’s eyes deceiving on him? Was it just a trick of the moonlight?

“NICOLÒ!”

The pale smudge was getting larger. It could not be an animal. An animal would’ve fled in the opposite direction. The smudge coming nearer.

On the other side of the canal, it moved. And Yusuf moved with it, towards it.

The pale smudge took on greater definition, and Yusuf had to bite his lip not to cry out. He blinked back tears.

Two arms. Two legs. Torso. Pelvis. Wrapped in what might have been a shroud. Even at this distance, Yusuf could tell it walked with a stilted, hesitant gait.

Was it really Nicolò?

It might be. It just might be.

The figure was tall and pale. It seemed to catch and reflect the moonlight in a way that Yusuf knew was a product of his own poetic imagination. 

When Yusuf was finally directly opposite the figure, he yelled,

“NICOLÒ!”

Hands waved, a nonsensical floundering that meant nothing to Yusuf, then both came to rest one atop the other on the left side of the chest.

It had to be. It had to be him.

After a hundred years, Yusuf had found him. And, somehow, he knew he was found.

There must be a meaning to all this. There must be a destiny, Yusuf thought, but he was also awash in gratitude of all the steps that had led him to this place, this island. He’d been wandering for so long, following trails that led nowhere. It had taken a hundred years to repair the wound, a hundred years of trudging and raging and despairing but here he was.

And there Nicolò was. And they were only separated by a bit of water.

Well, and one other thing.

While Yusuf thought and felt all this, he watched the feet step gingerly down the slope which led to the far bank. The arms began to swing wildly.

Then, to Yusuf’s horror, he saw the figure stumble.

Stumble and fall!

Yusuf’s reserve broke. He laid his pack and the scimitar on the ground and dove head-first into the icy water.

* * *

The cold was a horrid shock, but Yusuf pushed through his body’s chaos and found the body in the water in a state of absolute panic.

“Nicolò, it’s me. Stop fighting, please! I’ll get us to the other side.”

With one arm around a waist, a waist much thinner than Yusuf remembered, he swam back to shore, and flung them, together, onto the bank. The body was, indeed, wrapped in what might have been used for sails at one time but was now worn to the condition of poor sackcloth.

The body was thin, bony and pale.

Almost a skeleton. Almost.

Fingers.

Yusuf caught the fingers of one hand and held them up to view them in full moonlight.

Yusuf knew those fingers. They were thinner, too, but he knew them like he knew his own. Even after a hundred years. He’d drawn them, after all, committed them to memory as he sketched them over and over.

“It’s me, Nicolò, it’s me. It’s Yusuf.”

Fingers were brought to lips and Yusuf repeated the words over and over.

“It’s me, it’s me, it’s me. It’s Yusuf. Yusuf. Yusuf.”

Your Yusuf, his heart said. Your immortal Yusuf.

Yusuf took the second hand and brought it to his bearded cheeks and chin. The hand explored Yusuf’s nose and the crinkled sockets of his eyes and the wet moss of his brows.

The other hand kept reading the lips as they spoke the word. “Yusuf. Yusuf. Yusuf.”

Yusuf eyed the pack in the brush. He eased himself away from the body in order to reach it. 

The limbs thrashed, panicking.

“Sh-sh-sh!” Yusuf breathed on the fingers. Then he brought them to the left side of his chest and held them there while he extended himself.

Finally, Yusuf got his hand on the strap and gently drew it near, but the hands would not still. They pulled at Yusuf’s beard and his hair and ran over his face and neck and chest and arms. They were like fleshy moths to Yusuf’s light, and while he understood their frenzy, he also had a vital job to do.

Finally, Yusuf had no recourse but to pin the body prone to the ground with his full strength and weight.

“BE STILL!” he roared. The ground shook, and the body stilled at once. The hands dropped lifelessly.

Yusuf carefully removed what the pack contained and began to peel away the strips of linen which covered it.

“One more miracle,” he muttered. “Just one more.”

The moon loved Yusuf Al-Kaysani, and Yusuf knew this because it shone directly where Yusuf needed it most.

He took a deep breath.

And then Yusuf Al-Kaysani returned his burden of a hundred years to its proper place, that is, Yusuf Al-Kaysani set his beloved’s head, gently, tenderly, carefully, firmly, upon his beloved’s neck.

And held it there. And waited.

“Allah be merciful.”

Two chests rose and fell.

And there, in the moonlight, the seam where head met body forged and fused and faded.

“Oh, oh, it’s working. It’s working!”

Yusuf dared not remove his hands which were cradled under the head but simply watched by the light of the moon as the skin of the cheeks and lips softened and plumped.

Life was returning.

Yusuf waited.

Finally, finally, finally.

The eyelashes fluttered, and the eyes opened.

“Nicolò.”

Lips moved making a soundless reply.

“Yusuf.”

Yusuf wept, a century’s salty torrent, and through the tears, he said, “I’ve been searching for you for a hundred years, Nicolò. A hundred years!” Yusuf had despaired that he would never see those beautiful bewitching eyes again, but he’d been wrong. Wonderfully, marvelously wrong.

Nicolò took Yusuf’s hand and brought the fingers to his lips. Yusuf felt the reply on his fingertips.

“Thank you.”

At this, Yusuf went boneless with relief and fell sideways, crumpling on the ground on beside Nicolò’s prone form.

Nicolò raised his hands up in the air and rotated, twisting them at the wrists, wriggling the fingers. He brought his fingers to his own face, tracing his lips and nose and ears. Then his fingers rubbed the line where his head and body had rejoined.

Yusuf watched Nicolò’s eyelashes move and Nicolò’s chest heave.

Yusuf was happy.

Yusuf Al-Kaysani was happier than he’d ever thought he could be. 

Nicolò lowered his hands and turned his head, slowly, stiffly, toward Yusuf. His gaze seemed to dance over Yusuf’s features, taking them in.

Yusuf had to grin. His heart was bursting. The word ‘reunion,’ he realised held more joy than he ever dreamed.

Nicolò opened his mouth, and Yusuf could see, in flashes, his tongue lolling experimentally, touching his teeth. When Nicolò spoke, it was a hoarse croak, more breath than sound.

“You. Kept. My. Head.”

Yusuf nodded. “For a hundred years. But I am very happy to restore it to its rightful owner.”

Nicolò wheezed, which Yusuf recognised as a laugh when it was accompanied by the spreading and curling of lips.

Yusuf rolled onto his side. They might have been traveling companions, sleeping beside a campfire. They might have been lovers, sharing a bed at an inn.

“How do you feel, Nicolò?”

“Strange. Weak.” Nicolò furrowed his brow in concentration. “How do you feel?” Yusuf was cheered that the question came out louder and more fluid.

“Glorious.”

There followed a long pause. Then Nicolò said,

“You are my hero, Yusuf.”

“You are mine, Nicolò.”

“For?”

“Living.”

Nicolò’s eyebrows lifted and his lips pursed in an expression that was so familiar Yusuf had to bite back a tiny moan of contentment.

Nicolò. His Nicolò. He was the same.

“I lived without a head for a hundred years.”

Yusuf nodded.

“How is that possible, Yusuf?”

“I don’t know.” Yusuf felt a sense of urgency. “Nicolò, do you have your memories?”

Nicolò’s gaze drifted. “I think so. Uh, let’s see. You and I met in Jerusalem. We killed each other. Many times. We can’t die—even when we lose our heads.”

Yusuf laughed, then he sobered. “Nicolò, you are my beloved as well as my dearest friend and my brother-in-arms. Before this, I was about to declare my love for you. I don’t dare waste another precious moment without saying it. I am yours.” Yusuf placed his hand over his heart and bowed his head. Then he looked up into Nicolò’s soft eyes.

“We were rudely interrupted, weren’t we?”

“The rudest,” agreed Yusuf.

“Our love was delayed but not denied, Yusuf.”

“Our?” Was there ever a more beautiful word?

“I’m yours, Yusuf. I love you. A hundred years hasn’t changed that. A thousand more years won’t, either.”

Nicolò’s hand found Yusuf’s and brought Yusuf’s fingers to his lips. He kissed them, then rested them on the left side of his chest. He left Yusuf’s hand over his heart and reached out to caress the side of Yusuf’s smiling face.

“I knew this,” said Nicolò, brushing the corner of Yusuf’s eye and bearded cheek with his thumb. “My hands knew this even when I couldn’t see it. I heard you call my name. I felt the vibrations in the earth. Your cry reached me, Yusuf.”

“Good. That warms my heart and soul, Nicolò.”

Nicolò’s gaze lifted to the dark sky and the silvery moon. “What a beautiful night.”

“All Hallows’ Eve.”

“Really?!” Nicolò started. “Huh.” Then he began to struggle, trying to get his arms underneath himself and attempting to raise himself from the ground.

“Help me, Yusuf.”

Yusuf wanted nothing more.


	6. Chapter 6

“Where is this?” asked Nicolò.

“They call it Poveglia,” said Yusuf as he stooped to retrieve the scimitar. 

“Venice?!” Nicolò sighed. “Bastards.”

“Hey, hey!” called a voice.

A light was in distance, growing brighter.

“Over here!” called Yusuf.

The figure neared.

Nicolò sucked in a harsh breath. “Yusuf!” He grabbed the scimitar from Yusuf’s hand and raised it.

Yusuf caught Nicolò round the waist and held him. “No, Nicolò!”

“That face. That’s the last thing I saw, Yusuf. Is one of us too? He was standing over me with a blade held high. He killed me!”

“A hundred years, Nicolò. It’s his grandson. He helped me find you. He’s a friend.”

Giacomo halted, frozen.

Nicolò’s body was taut with tension, but he didn’t attempt to charge or shirk out of Yusuf’s embrace.

“Friend? Are you certain, Yusuf?”

“I am Giacomo, keeper of The Scimitar and The Sword tavern,” Giacomo said in a weak voice. “Last son of Giacomo, who was last son of the Mad Turk.”

“He wasn’t a Turk!” said Nicolò with a disdainful snarl.

“No,” agreed Giacomo. “He wasn’t a Turk.”

“He’s a friend, Nicolò,” said Yusuf. “He’ll prove it. Giacomo, throw me the sword.”

Without hesitation, Giacomo launched the sword in the air. 

Nicolò pushed the grip of the scimitar into Yusuf’s hand and caught the sword by the hilt. Then he swung the sword about.

“It is a good blade,” he said, but he didn’t give it back.

“You’re the ghost,” said Giacomo. “The undead of Poveglia.”

“Yes, and I’ve got my head back,” replied Nicolò. “Thanks to Yusuf.”

Yusuf loosened his grip. He looked at the place where the worn sackcloth was tied at Nicolò’s shoulder. “Nicolò, do you have a bronze button from your tunic?”

“One of them. I keep it in a tree.” He turned his head to look at the water. “On the other side.”

“We need it,” said Yusuf.

“There’s a narrow place we can cross up there.” Giacomo waved.

Nicolò looked at Yusuf. “Is the button important?”

“It will open a container which I suspect holds Karim’s confession. I had one button, Karim left one to his son which went to Giacomo, and you have one. The container won’t open without all three. I want the whole truth. Yours, his, mine.”

Nicolò nodded. “Let’s go.”

Yusuf called, “Giacomo, lead on.”

As Nicolò approached Giacomo, he extended his hand. “Nicolò di Genoa.”

Giacomo shook Nicolò’s hand for a long time, staring at it wonderingly and squeezing it gently. “You feel real enough now, but to think our ghost was a Genovese!” 

“A Venetian island couldn’t hold me forever,” said Nicolò wryly. “And I’m keeping this sword—for now. I won’t use it unless you force me.”

Giacomo swallowed and nodded. “It looks rather good on you.”

Yusuf’s grin threatened to split his face in two. His Nicolò was back. His body had been restored with his spirit intact. And he returned Yusuf’s love. Yusuf still wanted to read in Karim’s own words what he had done and why, but his enthusiasm for it was dwindling sharply. If Nicolò couldn’t find the button or if they never were able to open the cylinder, Yusuf wouldn’t be overtly distressed. The confession of a long-dead murderer was of little consequence now that his Nicolò was back and a future for them together lay ahead.

Giacomo took the lead, and Nicolò took Yusuf’s hand. They held hands until they reached the crossing point.

Yusuf readily understood, and shared, Nicolò’s need to confirm their new reality.

Nicolò’s touch. Warm, alive, familiar, comforting.

_I’m here. You’re here. We’re together once more._

“You need boots, Nicolò,” observed Yusuf as they crossed the canal.

“I need clothes, too,” retorted Nicolò. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“I remembered to ask Giacomo to bring clothes, but I forgot about your feet.”

Giacomo slapped Yusuf gently on the back. “I didn’t forget.”

“Good man. Thank you,” said Yusuf.

When they’d crossed the canal, Nicolò looked around and huffed amusedly, “I think I’m going to have to close my eyes. I think the scenery will only confuse me.”

Yusuf held Nicolò’s outstretched hand, and he, Nicolò, and Giacomo moved step by careful step.

At one point, Yusuf caught Giacomo’s eye.

Giacomo said, “When I asked you to tell a story, stranger, I had no idea I’d be in yours.”

“I’m not a stranger, Giacomo, and you’ve always been in our story.”

Giacomo smiled and let out a shuddering breath. “Sometimes a man with no family left and no family of his own asks himself what the purpose of his life is.” He shook his head. “I’m done asking that.” 

“Good.”

Nicolò didn’t open his eyes until he had the bronze button between his finger and thumb.

“Santa Madre di Dio, there it is,” said Giacomo. He set the lantern down and fished the cylinder out of his pack.

Then he, Yusuf, and Nicolò squatted round the light.

Nicolò placed the button in the third whole. It fitted neatly.

“Maybe you should let Nicolò or me open the cylinder, Giacomo. Just in case there are surprises of the kind that killed your cousin.” Yusuf shot Nicolò a glance. “His grandfather outfitted the cylinder with deadly traps to prevent tampering.”

Giacomo handed the cylinder to Yusuf, who was able to twist one end and pop open the shaft without incident. 

As Yusuf expected, it contained a letter loosely rolled.

Three sets of eyes were fixed to the page as Yusuf unrolled it. Giacomo and Nicolò read over Yusuf’s shoulders.

* * *

_I can no longer bear the torments of this life. I will lay down the truth of what happened and then I will commend my body to the sea. I killed a man. I severed his head from his body because he was a Frank. And because he had won the regard of one of my own. I met the Frank when he was travelling with a Maghrebi named Yusuf Al-Kaysani. The Frank’s name was Nicolò._

_When I met Yusuf, I immediately warmed to him. I was struck by how much he favored my sons. He seemed to have a little bit of all of them, but mostly Aziz, the eldest and my favorite. Aziz broke my heart when he fell in love with a Venetian girl and ran away with her. He betrayed me even further when he settled in his bride’s city and tempted the rest of his brothers to visit. One by one, they, too, made their families in far-off soils. What was I to do but follow? But I hate the life here._

_I’ve always been ashamed of my boys’ weakness for blue-eyed demons, and I saw that weakness clearly in poor Yusuf. The way he looked at that Frank turned my stomach inside out. He was so like my sons, beautiful, bright, strong but with one hopeless flaw. The more I thought about it, the more bitter it made me. I resolved to do something about it. I chose the last night before my departure. I put something in the wineskin I gave Yusuf to make the two sleep heavily. It was a test. I knew that the Frank would drink it. They sully their temples in innumerable ways. If Yusuf drank, too, well, he was already too far gone to help himself, to rid himself of the demon’s hold on him, and I had to do him the kindness before it corrupted him beyond all recognition. Before he brought shame to his father as my sons have done to me._

_I stole to their camp before dawn and saw at once that Yusuf had failed my test. That strengthened my resolve. I stood above the Frank. He opened his eyes, and I let the blade fall._

_Yusuf stirred._

_I jerked turned my head at the noise, and when I looked back there was only a body. I didn’t have time to search for the missing part. I wrapped the body in a rug I’d brought for the purpose and carried it back to my own camp. I did not want Yusuf to see the body. I wanted him to know the cruelty and fickleness of the Frank and assume his travelling companion had abandoned him as he no doubt would have eventually._

_I set off before daylight. I watched the sun rise with the satisfaction that I’d done for Yusuf what I could not do for my own sons._

_That was the last moment of satisfaction I ever knew._

_The ones who are reading this will know I am telling the truth._

_I kept the body close to me, planning to dump it in the first appropriate place._

_But the body would not stay dead. It rose. I struck it down. It fell. I wrapped it up and, after a while, it began to stir. My entire journey home was spent trying to kill what I had already killed._

_Why did I not abandon it?_

_Dreams._

_Every time I closed my eyes, I dreamt. Dreams that froze my soul, dreams that caused me to weep and moan and rend my garments into strips, dreams that prophesied what would happen to me if I abandoned the Frank’s body._

_I would be ripped alive by scavengers. I would be boiled alive in oil. I would be crushed slowly and finely by a merciless boulder._

_I tied the body with rope and abandoned the idea of killing it._

_When I returned to this vile city, I thought to bring the body to Poveglia. I left it here, unbound._

_The dreams persisted. I could no longer bear them. I devoted the last of my energies and faculties to creating a storage device for my confession. The dreams guided me in its crafting. I would hear little rhymes about buttons and secrets and such. By then, even if I’d had the strength to disobey the dreams, I wouldn’t have._

_If I’d known what lay in store, I would not have touched a hair on that Frank’s head. I thought his death would be a blessing to Yusuf, but it has been a nothing but a curse to me. I thought I was sparing a son, but I was condemning myself._

_I have visited Poveglia often. Sometimes, I find the body of the Frank lying on the ground, but sometimes it is walking with its arms outstretched._

_I don’t touch it. I don’t speak to it._

_I don’t know why the body continues to live. I don’t know how it can live without a head._

_It moves clumsily. Perhaps one day it will drown itself in the sea._

_But, no, that is me._

_Karim_

* * *

Yusuf found his fingers wound in Nicolò’s. He turned his head. Nicolò’s expression was stony. Yusuf turned his head to other side. Giacomo was weeping openly.

“How? How? How?” Giacomo shook his head. “How could he have killed you? For nothing!”

Yusuf twisted round.

Giacomo was looking at Nicolò. The tears continued to stream. “I am so very sorry. I imagined many things but never this. I have no right to ask for forgiveness for my family…”

Nicolò released Yusuf’s hand and brought it to rest on Giacomo’s shoulder. “It is enough to carry the burden of our own sins. We don’t need the added weight of others’ transgressions. You have helped Yusuf find me. Any debt your family owed is paid."

Yusuf and Nicolò exchanged glances. Then Yusuf stood, and Nicolò finally dropped the sword in his hand.

And they brought their arms around Giacomo.

* * *

“And who is this?” asked Nicolò nodding at the sleeping figure in the boat.

“He’s a boy who wanted to go ghost-hunting on All Hallows’ Eve,” explained Giacomo.

“But had too much to drink,” added Yusuf with a kindly smirk.

“Ghost-hunting, hmm.” Nicolò’s eyes took on a mischievous twinkle. He looked at Yusuf and at Giacomo. “We shouldn’t disappoint him.”

When they tied up the boat near The Scimitar and the Sword, they left Tonio in the bottom to sleep it off with his ghost-hunting stake plunged straight through Nicolò’s shroud of sailcloth.


	7. Chapter 7

They returned to The Scimitar and the Sword, and Giacomo invited Yusuf and Nicolò to be his guests for as long as they desired. They drank tea, good tea, nothing that tasted remotely like poison, and ate bread and cheese as the sun rose, Yusuf and Giacomo swapping stories and Nicolò listening intently.

They each had a wash, Nicolò receiving two large pots of near-scalding hot water when he announced his intention to wash off a century’s dirt. Giacomo offered Yusuf and Nicolò the use of the back storeroom for sleeping and furnished the space with two low cots and a heap of blankets.

Declaring himself tired enough to sleep for a week, Giacomo also announced the tavern would be closed the following day. Then he bid Yusuf and Nicolò good night.

Nicolò and Yusuf fussed with the bedding until they heard the creak of the bed upstairs. “I’m not the least bit sleepy,” whispered Nicolò. “I’ve slept for most of the last hundred years.”

Yusuf ran his fingers across Nicolò’s neck. “There isn’t even a scar.”

Nicolò caught Yusuf’s fingers and brought them to his lips and kissed them. “Thank you for not giving up on me.”

“I was tempted many times, but…”

“But! That’s the difference. Anyone would’ve been tempted to give up the search, but you didn’t. And you found me, and you put me back together.”

“Nicolò, I love you, and I am going to go on loving you.”

Nicolò smiled.

Yusuf cupped Nicolò’s head and dropped his gaze to Nicolò lips, signaling his intent long before he leaned close.

Nicolò met him halfway.

The kiss was soft and light and perfect. 

Yusuf pulled away. “That is the first of thousands of kisses.”

Nicolò nodded. “We have all the time in the world.”

Those eyes.

“May I say your eyes are like the sea, Nicolò. Changing, enchanting, dangerous, inspiring, leading fools to their peril and poets to their muse?” 

Nicolò’s lips twitched. “May I say you are an incurable romantic, Yusuf Al-Kaysani?” Then his expression sobered. “But unlike me, you’ve hardly slept at all for the last hundred years. Why don’t you rest?”

“Only if you rest beside me, Nicolò.”

“Of course.”

But it was easier said that done. Lying each in his own cot put them an unacceptable distance from one another, but their combined weight threatened to cave a single cot. The solution they reached was to put all the blankets save two on the floor and sleep curled together, with one blanket under their heads and one covering them.

This wasn’t the end of the negotiations. They flipped and flopped beneath the covers until finally they reached an arrangement that suited them both: Nicolò between Yusuf and the door and Yusuf pressed to Nicolò’s back with his arm slung protectively over Nicolò’s side.

“How does it feel sleeping with a ghost, the legendary Undead of Poveglia?” teased Nicolò when they were settled and snug.

“It feels perfect.” 

“How long do you think we’ll stay here?”

“I don’t know.”

“I like Giacomo.”

“So do I. I think he’s the is the friend Karim was supposed to be.” Yusuf kissed, then nuzzled Nicolò’s neck. “If it weren’t for him, I don’t know I would’ve found you.”

Nicolò hummed. Then he reached a hand back and sunk it into Yusuf’s hair. “Do you know my fingers recognized these even when I couldn’t see them?” He tugged. “I love your curls.”

“My curls love you, too.” Yusuf purred softly at the sensation and filed it away for later. “How about six months? We could help Giacomo with the tavern.”

“You will be great at that. I want to go back to Poveglia by daylight, Yusuf. I want to see it.”

“We can do that. We are close to Genoa. Do you want to go home?”

“Oh, Yusuf, don’t you know? I’m already home.”

Nicolò squeezed Yusuf’s arm, and Yusuf’s eyes filled with tears.

“Thank you for waiting for me, Nicolò.”

“For you, Yusuf, I’d wait forever.”

* * *

_**Beneath the scimitar crossed with the sword,** _

_**two thwarted warriors mend destiny’s cord.** _

_**The undead revived, the headless restored,** _

_**two find that to love is love’s own reward.** _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
